For decades, many international relations (IR) scholars dismissed elite experiments as a method because they viewed it as too risky, too costly or too difficult to implement. As part of a behavioral turn in IR, a growing number of scholars have nevertheless adopted the method in their own research. The shift raises important questions. Under what conditions do elite experiments add value to IR scholarship? How can scholars overcome the logistical and ethical challenges of sampling such an elusive group? This article makes an original conceptual contribution to methodological debates on the role of behavior approach by analyzing experiments on foreign policy elites. We analyze the method's strengths and weaknesses, evaluate ethical considerations and present what is, to the best of our knowledge, the most comprehensive set of implementation guidelines. Our article draws on recently published IR research and argues that the payoffs from elite experiments are well worth the effort.